I’m sorry to say goodbye to January. It’s a grand month, full of hope and new beginnings – especially when the weather is easy, as this year. The light level must be about the same as in November; I marvel every time at how different January feels. The snowdrops are blooming – and, hey! I saw some dandelions yesterday!

I’ve accomplished a bit this month, but the trouble with doing anything about chaos is that all I ever achieve is to reveal more of it. Dirt, ironing, piles of paper – the principle applies across the board.

Comments

Thanks for the encouragement about seed-sprouting. Lorna, when I read your message, I thought, I’ll try alfalfa next and then I ought, no, I’ll try alfalfa right now. The sprouter has two tiers. So I have soaked some overnight, where it swelled up nicely, and I’ve now spread it about. Meanwhile the onion seeds have made very slight progress. All my older seeds are in Kirkmichael – I will look out the old lettuce and broccoli (thanks, Pamela) when we are next there.

Mar, please light the Christmas tree candles next year, just once, on Christmas afternoon as it gets dark. You’ll survive, I promise you.

Lee, I’ll certainly have a look at that Detroit website.

Knitting

I started the hat last night, and it’s looking good. Alas the print-out doesn’t include the URL. I think I may have mentioned it when I downloaded it, but it’s too much trouble to trawl back through the archives.

Here’s a picture of the lace- and cobweb-weight yarn I pulled out of stash to tempt my sister. Nothing is quite right, though, so we’re going for something from the considerable range of colours in Sharon Miller's merino lace-weight. I notice that it’s on sale for the next two days! My sister wants absolutely everything in A Gathering of Lace but in the end I think will stick with Amedro’s Cobweb Evening Wrap for shape, and I’ll put in some patterns from Heirloom Knitting, yet to be chosen.

The three skeins on the right I bought in Beijing. I wonder if they might even have some cashmere in them. They were completely unlabelled and I had no syllable of language in common with the nice woman in the shop. I hoped my sister might go for that yellow, which is such a wonderful Chinese-y colour. But she says it's not for her.

Lorna wants to enter a Scottish team in the Knitting Olympics. Why not? I’m only vaguely aware of what’s going on, but I was attracted by the notion of the Knitting Special Olympics. It was on one of the blogs I read, but can I find it now? no. The idea was that you started knitting something on Day One and maybe you finished it sometime and maybe you laid it aside and started knitting something else.